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John 16:7b
“If I go, I will send [the Holy Spirit] to you.”
Christ, in the Upper Room Discourse (John 13–17), gave vital teaching on the Holy Trinity, especially the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Thus far, we have seen that it is to the church’s advantage that Jesus returned bodily to heaven, for His departure meant that the Holy Spirit could come and use the church to carry the message of salvation to the ends of the earth (John 16:4b–7a). In today’s passage, we learn that the Holy Spirit would come because Jesus, the Son of God, would send Him (v. 7b).
The church fathers frequently reflected on Jesus’ promise to send the Spirit to articulate the orthodox biblical teaching on the nature of God and confront several heresies that denied the deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Particularly during the fourth century, with the approval of the Nicene Creed, theologians including Athanasius of Alexandria and Gregory of Nazianzus started to use a particular grammar to assist the church in teaching the doctrine of God in a way that would preserve the unity of the one divine essence and the distinction between the three persons who share that one essence. Later thinkers such as Augustine in the fifth century and Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century would further develop this Trinitarian grammar, and their teaching was adopted by historic Protestantism.
Reflecting on Scripture, the church speaks of the Trinitarian processions and the Trinitarian missions. Processions describes the inner life of the Godhead and establishes the distinctions between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The processions are the Father’s eternal generation of the Son and the Holy Spirit’s eternal procession from the Father and the Son. What makes the Son distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit is not that He possesses different essential attributes than They do but that He is eternally begotten of the Father. Similarly, the Holy Spirit is distinct from the Father and the Son not because He possesses different essential attributes than They do but because He proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son. We do not know how the Son’s eternal generation and the Spirit’s eternal procession differ; we just know that they do.
The Trinitarian missions, which temporally reflect the processions, are the Father’s sending of the Son and the Father and Son’s joint sending of the Spirit. Jesus’ promise to send the Spirit describes one of the Trinitarian missions. He, with the Father, sends the Spirit because the Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
One of the purposes of God is to reveal Himself to His people, and this means that everything He does reveals something about who He is. God wants us to know Him, and we can trust that He has revealed Himself truly in His actions and in His words. We never have to fear that God has not told us the truth about Himself in the sending of the Son and the Holy Spirit.
For further study
- Micah 5:2
- John 14:26
The bible in a year
- Exodus 13–15
- Matthew 19:1–15
- Exodus 16–19
- Matthew 19:16–30